by Rachel Zlatkin
A short while ago on FB, I provided a link to an opinion article written by Bernie Sanders, “Democrats Need to Wake Up,” published in The New York Times. Along with the link, I made the following post:
“I miss Joe Bageant. I also keep having flashbacks to Dennis Kucinich at the DNC: Wake up, America! I respect Hillary Clinton -- her determination, her stamina, her work ethic, her patience, her intelligence, all of the focus, planning, and work it took her to reach this hard earned place. How she managed it through decades of misogyny. I understand, to a point, why people think Sanders was a one issue candidate, and I understand why people think to vote for Jill Stein comes from privilege... that it is easier to do so when you will be less affected by a Trump presidency. I get so frustrated, though, that the same critique does not happen of a vote for the Democratic party and establishment politics. That vote protects us from Trump, but we have so much to do beyond that and I'm not convinced that's on the agenda yet. I think this may be the start to my next post on Lens Out. :-) but I just have to say, I really miss Joe Bageant these days.”
I had a particular clip of Joe Bageant in mind when I wrote that post. He discusses the motivation behind his memoirs Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir and Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War, books in which he discusses his Virginian/Appalachian roots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYaqEgyrh1M
I’ve never forgotten the first time I heard this interview clip. It woke me up. Bageant had the kind of voice I most enjoy. Gravelly and expressive, good humored with a calmly submerged anger, he hangs on his vowels as though contemplating his own sincerity. His voice carried me along even as he directed me to his uncomfortable point: that we middle class liberals are detached enough to let the poor in the heartland remain poor and uneducated. “You didn’t reach out. You didn’t do anything for those people. You’re perfectly happy to let them be dumb.” I hope you’ll listen to all three minutes or pick up one of his books sometime, if only because he takes the time to write to us. He could easily have decided to write off liberals as intellectual snobs. Instead, he reaches out. He identifies as a redneck (and he’s studied the etymology of that word); he understands his people as a culture. But we are his intended audience. And he’s a really good read.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we communicate with each other, especially online and in social media. I think it’s common knowledge that Democrats and Republicans tend to do more talking at each other than with each other. But as Bernie Sanders’ campaign became more of a challenge to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, I began watching how we communicate within the Democratic party… because of course I had friends on both sides. What I saw was often enough the same, talking at rather than with. I felt oddly situated. I’m a Sanders supporter. Voting for a Democratic Socialist meant more to me than the opportunity to vote for a woman. A Democratic Socialist vote is a vote for women, so my feminism felt incorporated in Sanders’ campaign. I was less concerned with the fact that, due to his privilege as a white male, he is able to rant, bluster, or be grouchy, and more interested in the use to which he put that privilege and anger, the policies on which he campaigned, and his history as an activist.
At the same time, there’s nothing comfortable about being a feminist reading the rhetoric used to describe Hillary Clinton, enraged and hateful language that has since exploded on the RNC stage. When Bernie Sanders was still in the race, however, I often felt I was reading posts in support of Hillary Clinton from the sidelines, simply by virtue of my being a Sanders supporter. If I managed to feel like a member of the intended audience, it usually carried the weight of association with the misogynistic “Bernie Bros” (I was guilty by association, and thus must defend my position as a Sanders’ supporter). I was largely silent about this conflict because I didn’t (and I still don’t) fully trust my own reading of why I felt torn. I was raised in a house with Rush Limbaugh in the background, and I’ve absorbed enough hate toward the Clintons to be especially self reflective when discussing her. My method has been to keep my focus on policy and to do my research.
Also, the political discussions on social media did not feel like a safe space to ask the questions I still have about the Bernie Bros phenomenon; it’s a pejorative term. It works to categorize, so it doesn’t exactly invite questions about who they are, how many of them exist, why they’re so angry, and how many of them are trolls aiming to divide the party while also getting their jollies by hating on Hillary Clinton. Sanders’ delay in responding did not help either. It left people like me, who were observing what was happening, with no clear path through the thicket of hate and back to the message. It’s a missed opportunity inside the party, especially because such emphasis was placed on the mere existence of BBros that any examination of why did not happen (There's the longstanding Republican campaign against the Clintons... but I wanted more details about why/how inside the Democratic party). It also bothered me that the Bernie Bros narrative seemed to overwhelm any acknowledgement or study of the class and generational divisions within the party. I think these latter divisions are still under-appreciated by the party establishment, and that is unfortunate because it threatens the Democratic party’s chances of winning the presidential election.
The divisions between Democratic white collar and blue collar workers and between the generations within the party need examining. Anyone watching the RNC over the last few days knows that Trump has mastered the media technology of the youth and is at least a Republican in his sense of audience: he has tapped into angry white male blue collar workers and given them voice by providing them social media access of which he and his campaign are master. It’s monstrous and scary. Those questions about the Bernie Bros might have helped orient the Democratic campaign at this point… regardless of candidate.
Most of my friends are academics and scholars, and we’re supposed to be good at critical thinking and discussion. We’re trained in argument and — at least theoretically — value diversity, the rhetorical situation, context, and thesis balanced with antithesis. Maybe it’s just because FB, social media, and texting do not communicate the act of listening or facilitate the silence necessary to deeper contemplation. The implicit message of these modes of communication is that we must communicate fast with little to no time for contemplative silence. These modes of communication invite, even require, a reactive response. And we already have a two party system that invites, even requires, splitting candidates and messages into simplistic categories of “all good” or “all bad.” Once you know which side you’re on, why bother listening to other points of view or appreciating the nuanced context of your own position?
I wonder how Facebook and other social media might look if we insisted on using language intersubjectively:
“When we consider language as speech between subjects, we modify our understanding of the move from body to speech. Speech no longer figures as the activity of a subject empowered to speak, but as a possibility given by relationship with a recognizing other. Or, we could say, speech is conditioned by the recognition of two subjects, rather than a property of a subject. Because communicative speech establishes a space of dialogue potentially outside the mental control of either or both participants, it is a site of mediation” (Jessica Benjamin, Shadow of the Other 27).
Relinquishing "mental control" over meaning is frightening, especially within the confines of a two party system that promotes either/or thinking, but letting go of our control over a message is at the core of true dialogue and democracy. The language of identity politics is an important step (BLM), but change only comes when a voice is in relation to other voices. A co-creative mode of communication still recognizes the other as a subject in their own right and includes the context from which an other speaks; it also invites improvisation, self reflexivity, meaning building, and requires at least an openness to change one’s view … maybe not completely, but enough to incorporate a bit of the other, enough to allow for the subtleties of our political moment or the significance of any given candidate.
I listen to Joe Bageant because he presents a view I have come to value. The Democratic party has not paid it sufficient heed. By encouraging everyone to get a college degree as a means to national progress, the party fails to recognize the hard work of a population it professes to represent, the working class. Blue collar workers are a group of people made invisible, they feel their erasure, they know their mode of work is becoming obsolete… To say their anger results from the fact that they are no longer the privileged white male / class they once were is only part of their story. For example, they know, as Sellus Wilder points out, that the coal industry is in decline and that the decline is irreversible. They have, as Joe Bageant repeatedly reminds us, fought “in every war since the French and Indian War.” But what concrete alternatives does the Democratic party work toward at a local, state, or federal level for the livelihood of this population? Where’s the push for infrastructure? Where's the drinkable water?
Sellus Wilder lost his Kentucky Senate run, and that is as much because the Democratic party values winning over progressive policy as it is the way people vote. We’ve seen the Democratic party choose its candidate often enough to know that the people’s vote is manipulated, anyway (Just ask the Hillary Clinton of 2008 alongside the Bernie Sanders of today). Thus far, the fantasy provided by the Republican party weaves an immediate magic that the Democratic party fails to break through. And just to be clear, we all need denial to a certain degree. How else do we get in our cars and drive each morning without crashing over the horror-cliff that is climate change? Denial occurs in degrees.
Can the Democratic party allow for multiple voices to be heard without assuming that person’s vote? Can we the people allow for a context beyond the two party system by listening to third party candidates and Millenials, and then find ways to support components of their platform? Can we consider voices like those of Joe Bageant before mocking the stupidity of Trump’s supporters or writing them off as racist and sexist assholes? Can we recognize the privilege that comes with a white collar enough to do what we can to change it? Can we counter the corporatization of establishment politics and vote for an establishment candidate?
The Democratic party has been able to rely on the Republican party to scare progressives, Greens, and Democratic Socialists into voting Democrat. Donald Trump is the scariest Republican candidate yet. But his convention (and Bernie Sanders' run) also highlights the fact that the American public is angry enough to make substantial challenges to establishment politics. I’m a Bernie Sanders’ supporter who believes, for this reason, that Sanders is right where he needs to be… changing the Democratic party from the inside and inspiring a generation of people to join him. Allowing for change is a better option than a hostile takeover, if the RNC is any indication of the possible fall out for ignoring the populace.
When I listen to Joe Bageant describe the metaphorical wall middle class liberals have built around blue collar poor in the heartland, it does not pale beside the “real” wall Donald Trump would build across our border with Mexico. It explains the success of that fantasy. Bageant makes his point in 2010, one year before he died and six years before Trump’s candidacy. I don’t know that it even matters whether I agree with Bageant or not. Bageant describes how his people feel, and those feelings are based on how they live, on their material conditions, not just Republican propaganda. Bageant helps me understand the vitriol at the RNC, the hatred for Obama, for Clinton, for immigrants, for refugees, for women, for Muslims, for LGBTQ, for the other. From a socialist’s perspective, the economy is never a one issue topic. The economy provides the structure on which racism and misogyny function and thrive. It splits an increasingly powerful underclass.
If the Democratic party wants to win in November and remain relevant to the people who currently feel left behind, then it needs to become more willing to take the risk of losing in favor of advocating and following through on progressive change. And its members, supporters of Clinton and Sanders, need to activate on behalf of policy change so that those who feel voiceless have concrete alternatives to what could otherwise become a fully actualized Trumpian phantasy.
A short while ago on FB, I provided a link to an opinion article written by Bernie Sanders, “Democrats Need to Wake Up,” published in The New York Times. Along with the link, I made the following post:
“I miss Joe Bageant. I also keep having flashbacks to Dennis Kucinich at the DNC: Wake up, America! I respect Hillary Clinton -- her determination, her stamina, her work ethic, her patience, her intelligence, all of the focus, planning, and work it took her to reach this hard earned place. How she managed it through decades of misogyny. I understand, to a point, why people think Sanders was a one issue candidate, and I understand why people think to vote for Jill Stein comes from privilege... that it is easier to do so when you will be less affected by a Trump presidency. I get so frustrated, though, that the same critique does not happen of a vote for the Democratic party and establishment politics. That vote protects us from Trump, but we have so much to do beyond that and I'm not convinced that's on the agenda yet. I think this may be the start to my next post on Lens Out. :-) but I just have to say, I really miss Joe Bageant these days.”
I had a particular clip of Joe Bageant in mind when I wrote that post. He discusses the motivation behind his memoirs Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir and Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America’s Class War, books in which he discusses his Virginian/Appalachian roots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYaqEgyrh1M
I’ve never forgotten the first time I heard this interview clip. It woke me up. Bageant had the kind of voice I most enjoy. Gravelly and expressive, good humored with a calmly submerged anger, he hangs on his vowels as though contemplating his own sincerity. His voice carried me along even as he directed me to his uncomfortable point: that we middle class liberals are detached enough to let the poor in the heartland remain poor and uneducated. “You didn’t reach out. You didn’t do anything for those people. You’re perfectly happy to let them be dumb.” I hope you’ll listen to all three minutes or pick up one of his books sometime, if only because he takes the time to write to us. He could easily have decided to write off liberals as intellectual snobs. Instead, he reaches out. He identifies as a redneck (and he’s studied the etymology of that word); he understands his people as a culture. But we are his intended audience. And he’s a really good read.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how we communicate with each other, especially online and in social media. I think it’s common knowledge that Democrats and Republicans tend to do more talking at each other than with each other. But as Bernie Sanders’ campaign became more of a challenge to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, I began watching how we communicate within the Democratic party… because of course I had friends on both sides. What I saw was often enough the same, talking at rather than with. I felt oddly situated. I’m a Sanders supporter. Voting for a Democratic Socialist meant more to me than the opportunity to vote for a woman. A Democratic Socialist vote is a vote for women, so my feminism felt incorporated in Sanders’ campaign. I was less concerned with the fact that, due to his privilege as a white male, he is able to rant, bluster, or be grouchy, and more interested in the use to which he put that privilege and anger, the policies on which he campaigned, and his history as an activist.
At the same time, there’s nothing comfortable about being a feminist reading the rhetoric used to describe Hillary Clinton, enraged and hateful language that has since exploded on the RNC stage. When Bernie Sanders was still in the race, however, I often felt I was reading posts in support of Hillary Clinton from the sidelines, simply by virtue of my being a Sanders supporter. If I managed to feel like a member of the intended audience, it usually carried the weight of association with the misogynistic “Bernie Bros” (I was guilty by association, and thus must defend my position as a Sanders’ supporter). I was largely silent about this conflict because I didn’t (and I still don’t) fully trust my own reading of why I felt torn. I was raised in a house with Rush Limbaugh in the background, and I’ve absorbed enough hate toward the Clintons to be especially self reflective when discussing her. My method has been to keep my focus on policy and to do my research.
Also, the political discussions on social media did not feel like a safe space to ask the questions I still have about the Bernie Bros phenomenon; it’s a pejorative term. It works to categorize, so it doesn’t exactly invite questions about who they are, how many of them exist, why they’re so angry, and how many of them are trolls aiming to divide the party while also getting their jollies by hating on Hillary Clinton. Sanders’ delay in responding did not help either. It left people like me, who were observing what was happening, with no clear path through the thicket of hate and back to the message. It’s a missed opportunity inside the party, especially because such emphasis was placed on the mere existence of BBros that any examination of why did not happen (There's the longstanding Republican campaign against the Clintons... but I wanted more details about why/how inside the Democratic party). It also bothered me that the Bernie Bros narrative seemed to overwhelm any acknowledgement or study of the class and generational divisions within the party. I think these latter divisions are still under-appreciated by the party establishment, and that is unfortunate because it threatens the Democratic party’s chances of winning the presidential election.
The divisions between Democratic white collar and blue collar workers and between the generations within the party need examining. Anyone watching the RNC over the last few days knows that Trump has mastered the media technology of the youth and is at least a Republican in his sense of audience: he has tapped into angry white male blue collar workers and given them voice by providing them social media access of which he and his campaign are master. It’s monstrous and scary. Those questions about the Bernie Bros might have helped orient the Democratic campaign at this point… regardless of candidate.
Most of my friends are academics and scholars, and we’re supposed to be good at critical thinking and discussion. We’re trained in argument and — at least theoretically — value diversity, the rhetorical situation, context, and thesis balanced with antithesis. Maybe it’s just because FB, social media, and texting do not communicate the act of listening or facilitate the silence necessary to deeper contemplation. The implicit message of these modes of communication is that we must communicate fast with little to no time for contemplative silence. These modes of communication invite, even require, a reactive response. And we already have a two party system that invites, even requires, splitting candidates and messages into simplistic categories of “all good” or “all bad.” Once you know which side you’re on, why bother listening to other points of view or appreciating the nuanced context of your own position?
I wonder how Facebook and other social media might look if we insisted on using language intersubjectively:
“When we consider language as speech between subjects, we modify our understanding of the move from body to speech. Speech no longer figures as the activity of a subject empowered to speak, but as a possibility given by relationship with a recognizing other. Or, we could say, speech is conditioned by the recognition of two subjects, rather than a property of a subject. Because communicative speech establishes a space of dialogue potentially outside the mental control of either or both participants, it is a site of mediation” (Jessica Benjamin, Shadow of the Other 27).
Relinquishing "mental control" over meaning is frightening, especially within the confines of a two party system that promotes either/or thinking, but letting go of our control over a message is at the core of true dialogue and democracy. The language of identity politics is an important step (BLM), but change only comes when a voice is in relation to other voices. A co-creative mode of communication still recognizes the other as a subject in their own right and includes the context from which an other speaks; it also invites improvisation, self reflexivity, meaning building, and requires at least an openness to change one’s view … maybe not completely, but enough to incorporate a bit of the other, enough to allow for the subtleties of our political moment or the significance of any given candidate.
I listen to Joe Bageant because he presents a view I have come to value. The Democratic party has not paid it sufficient heed. By encouraging everyone to get a college degree as a means to national progress, the party fails to recognize the hard work of a population it professes to represent, the working class. Blue collar workers are a group of people made invisible, they feel their erasure, they know their mode of work is becoming obsolete… To say their anger results from the fact that they are no longer the privileged white male / class they once were is only part of their story. For example, they know, as Sellus Wilder points out, that the coal industry is in decline and that the decline is irreversible. They have, as Joe Bageant repeatedly reminds us, fought “in every war since the French and Indian War.” But what concrete alternatives does the Democratic party work toward at a local, state, or federal level for the livelihood of this population? Where’s the push for infrastructure? Where's the drinkable water?
Sellus Wilder lost his Kentucky Senate run, and that is as much because the Democratic party values winning over progressive policy as it is the way people vote. We’ve seen the Democratic party choose its candidate often enough to know that the people’s vote is manipulated, anyway (Just ask the Hillary Clinton of 2008 alongside the Bernie Sanders of today). Thus far, the fantasy provided by the Republican party weaves an immediate magic that the Democratic party fails to break through. And just to be clear, we all need denial to a certain degree. How else do we get in our cars and drive each morning without crashing over the horror-cliff that is climate change? Denial occurs in degrees.
Can the Democratic party allow for multiple voices to be heard without assuming that person’s vote? Can we the people allow for a context beyond the two party system by listening to third party candidates and Millenials, and then find ways to support components of their platform? Can we consider voices like those of Joe Bageant before mocking the stupidity of Trump’s supporters or writing them off as racist and sexist assholes? Can we recognize the privilege that comes with a white collar enough to do what we can to change it? Can we counter the corporatization of establishment politics and vote for an establishment candidate?
The Democratic party has been able to rely on the Republican party to scare progressives, Greens, and Democratic Socialists into voting Democrat. Donald Trump is the scariest Republican candidate yet. But his convention (and Bernie Sanders' run) also highlights the fact that the American public is angry enough to make substantial challenges to establishment politics. I’m a Bernie Sanders’ supporter who believes, for this reason, that Sanders is right where he needs to be… changing the Democratic party from the inside and inspiring a generation of people to join him. Allowing for change is a better option than a hostile takeover, if the RNC is any indication of the possible fall out for ignoring the populace.
When I listen to Joe Bageant describe the metaphorical wall middle class liberals have built around blue collar poor in the heartland, it does not pale beside the “real” wall Donald Trump would build across our border with Mexico. It explains the success of that fantasy. Bageant makes his point in 2010, one year before he died and six years before Trump’s candidacy. I don’t know that it even matters whether I agree with Bageant or not. Bageant describes how his people feel, and those feelings are based on how they live, on their material conditions, not just Republican propaganda. Bageant helps me understand the vitriol at the RNC, the hatred for Obama, for Clinton, for immigrants, for refugees, for women, for Muslims, for LGBTQ, for the other. From a socialist’s perspective, the economy is never a one issue topic. The economy provides the structure on which racism and misogyny function and thrive. It splits an increasingly powerful underclass.
If the Democratic party wants to win in November and remain relevant to the people who currently feel left behind, then it needs to become more willing to take the risk of losing in favor of advocating and following through on progressive change. And its members, supporters of Clinton and Sanders, need to activate on behalf of policy change so that those who feel voiceless have concrete alternatives to what could otherwise become a fully actualized Trumpian phantasy.